


the small steps that others can't see

by thatfizzyfeeling



Series: taking the long way home [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alpha Laura Hale, Alpha Peter Hale, Comatose Peter, Delta Derek Hale, Derek Hale is Not a Failwolf, Derek is Complicated, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Full Shift Werewolves, Gen, Good Peter Hale, Graphic Description, Healing, Hermaphrodites, Hopeful Ending, Kinda, Laura Being An Asshole, Minor Character Death, Plants, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, Recovering Peter Hale, Sane Peter Hale, Suicidal Thoughts, Survivor Guilt, Tea, suffocation warning, well he's working on it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-11-06 03:14:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17931764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatfizzyfeeling/pseuds/thatfizzyfeeling
Summary: But the day finally comes after Peter’s been Alpha for nearly six months that his eyes open and he tracks Derek around the room. His eyes settle on blue and his throat works around the tube, rasping something that sounds like ‘water’, might be ‘what’, could be ‘wait’. Derek barely has time to blink at him, startled, before his eyes are closed and he’s gone again.In which Derek goes back for Peter and they begin to heal together.





	1. a scar does not form on the dying

**Author's Note:**

> Wow this got so much bigger than I planned, and let me say that I started this thinking it would be just a sweet story under 8k, maybe even under 5k. HA. It STILL isn't the big one I've been writing for years - I actually started this after I posted SS, but it kinda grabbed hold of my hand and took off.
> 
> Here's the full quote I got the title from: 
> 
> “It's the days you have every right to breakdown and fall apart, yet choose to show up anyway that matter most. Don't diminish the small steps that others can't see.”  
> ― Brittany Burgunder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> First there's Derek.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was an experience, diving into this. Not the first time I've experimented in the Teen Wolf universe but it was the first time I started away from Stiles' POV. I think it did me good, to write someone different and work with a POV so different from what I'm used to. Ironically Derek is more like me than Stiles is so it was a...unique kind of feeling to just write out my own reactions instead of putting myself in someone else's shoes. Love my boys, all of them from One Piece to Marvel and Dragon Age, to the Wizardverse and Middle Earth and GOT to Naruto and back to Teen Wolf, hope I did them justice!

It’s been a long time since Derek’s trusted anyone. Well, trusted them with anything personal, anything real. Sometimes he doesn’t have a choice, he gets pushed into situations where he’s forced to trust people he wouldn’t normally put faith in, but those times don’t count. The last time he trusted someone like that, the last time he _chose_ to trust someone, people died.

He’d trusted Laura, had trusted her all the way to New York, three-thousand miles away from everything he’d ever known, the two of them running scared and alone. He’d trusted her, followed her into a tiny two bedroom flat with a leaky kitchen faucet and never questioned her. He’d believed in her, would have done anything for her, right up until she ordered him not to go back for Peter.

It wasn’t that he blamed her, or even felt that guilty himself, for leaving Peter in the hospital those first few months. Sure he’d have preferred to find a way to transfer him to a local hospital, but he understood the panic and fear, the grief pressing against their fur until it felt like they were dripping with it. Retreat, lick your wounds, live to come back once it wasn’t all so fresh.

The first time he’d brought it up she’d seemed sad and uncertain, but the more they talked about it the more Laura seemed to pull away from the idea. Finally it came to a head when she yelled at him, asking why he had to keep bringing it up, _obviously_ they couldn’t go back, what if there were still hunters watching for them?

“But what about Peter? He’s alone there, Laura, he’s pack and he’s all _alone_. How can you just not care?”

It was _Peter,_ for fuck’s sake. It was their uncle, only eight years older than Laura, the one who taught them how to hunt when their Mom was busy with inter-pack politics, the one to sing Laura lullabies when she was little. He could still remember the way his uncle had grinned when Cora’s first word had been, “ _Pe’tr.”,_ the way he’d taught them about their heritage. He had helped Derek understand the history of his gender, the important role they played in the family but also why he had to be very careful with who he trusted. Oh his parents were always open to talk with him, especially his Momma and Grandmother, to give advice and share experiences, but Peter was the one who had been trusted with teaching him.

He’d been their favourite uncle, had coached Laura through presentations for classes and given her advice on boys, threatened the ones that hurt her feelings. He’d been more of an older brother to her than an uncle, laying on her bed and listening to her talk, letting her and Cora paint his nails.

God and _Cora_. Cora was his little mini-me, the one they all thought would take his place in the next generation, the most ruthless of them all. Oh she’d follow him and dress up in his clothes like Derek had with his Momma’s when he was little, trailing his shirt hems while he watched over her like a benevolent god.

He helped Derek get through the feelings he had for Paige, had been the one to find him and stop him from approaching Ennis, had let him talk out the feelings again when Paige moved away a few months later. When he’d gone away to college the next year Derek had been moping around in the public library when he met _her_ and he starkly remembered the way Peter’s voice in his head had never really trusted Kate. Derek had ignored his instincts, had ignored every warning Peter had ever given him, and look where they were now.

Laura’s face crumpled a little, “Of course I care, Derek, but I have to think about us now, about keeping us _safe_. It’s been over a year and nothing bad has happened to Peter, but he’s also not getting any better. I can’t – I can’t risk _our_ safety for him, even though I love him, because he might not wake up. He might not ever wake up, but if we go back, and they found us here, we would just have to leave him behind all over again.” She’d started crying and Derek had let it go, hugging her and giving comfort where he could.

It’s not that Derek didn’t get all that. He did, he really did, but another month had barely passed when he’d brought up the possibility of him going by himself to start the transfer. He would be discreet, would come straight back and let the hospitals do all the work of transporting Peter.

Later he would wonder if it was him suggesting he leave her behind, alone, that had brought that wild look into her eyes. Her red, red eyes. That _voice_ , the voice that was to be _obeyedobeyedobeyed_ clamping down on his inner wolf, chains sealing him up from leaving the city without her. She hadn’t meant it as a punishment, she explained calmly, almost reasonably, but she had to keep him safe. _She had to be a good Alpha._

And just like that, his autonomy was taken, _again_ , for the second time in as many years. He wasn’t sure if she really understood what that did to him, what it did to the Delta inside him to know that there was a pack member hurting and being literally unable to help. It scraped his insides raw most days, squeezing up tight inside his head like a virus and pressing against his thoughts so hard sometimes the migraines drove him shifting into a small ball under his bed for hours.

He felt doubly betrayed when it was obvious that Laura wasn’t affected by the abandonment any more than if Peter had been a stranger on the street. How was it so easy for her to throw him away? Would she do the same to Derek eventually because he didn’t agree? It took only a few months for Derek to move out into his own apartment, fleeing from Laura the only way he could without having the chains in his wolf pull taut. She dogged him that first year, not so much trying to understand as being exasperated as to why he couldn’t just accept that she was right.

Instead he changed his locks and had wards installed so she couldn’t just barge in when he didn’t want her to. He got a job and spent three months of pay on replacing his front door with something solid and steel studded, reinforced with dozens of spells and a thick strip of mountain ash attached to the bottom so when he shut it nothing could get in. Oh Laura had fits over that door but save for giving him another Order there was nothing she could do to make him change it. She never did though, perhaps sensing that their bond was already frayed and thinning with every outburst.

He kept calling the hospital through it all, would make them set the phone on speaker by Peter’s bed and talk to him until the battery died. Laura got involved with one of the local packs, never seeming to notice the way Derek shied away from her touch, shuddered when she’d scent his neck. It wasn’t quite enough to break the bond between Alpha and Delta, but god Derek could feel it hanging by threads most days.

It was ironic to him years later that it wasn’t Laura dying that had made him realise she was dead; by that point he hadn’t felt the bond between them in nearly two years save for on the full moon when his wolf reached for it on a subconscious level. No, what made him drive across the country and storm back in Beacon Hills was the bond that snapped into place between he and _Peter._

*

_August 3, 2012_

He finds him in the hospital, sits there at the side of the bed and holds his hand until the nurses make him leave. He can feel the bond in his mind, as strong as his Mom’s used to be, so much stronger than the one he and Laura had ever had, so he feels secure enough to leave for a night. Promising to be back the next day he goes to find Laura. He buries her by the house that night in an unmarked grave for now. Her throat’s ripped out but her nails have blood under them too, her mouth smeared over with it, so she’d fought back. It settled some animal instinct, knowing it was a fair fight and not a slaughter.

The Alpha had been weak, and so was challenged and beaten. Now he has a stronger Alpha, can _feel_ it settling around the scars in his mind left by Laura’s commands.

Derek hadn’t even paid attention at the time because he could feel his wolf howling, roaring, _demanding_ to get to the Alpha, to give support and solidify the bond. He’d left the city and never cared about the chains of her orders, had felt them snap under the pressure and weight of the heavy new connection. So he buries her but barely mourns, having lost his sister years ago. He leaves the wolfsbane inside the grave instead of lining the outside like he would if he was declaring vengeance, going back to where it had happened and turning over the dirt so the blood’s covered by a good foot of drier soil.

Then he finds a hotel close to the hospital because he has things to do if he’s going to take care of Peter, and he can’t do them from the middle of the Preserve in the burnt out shell of his childhood.

*

_August 15, 2012_

It takes almost two weeks but he manages to get Peter transferred to Mount Sinai in their long-term care unit, in a room facing Central Park, looking down on a playground. Peter’s the same, still staring at the ceiling when his eyes are open at all, but Derek doesn’t worry overmuch. He can feel the bond thrumming between them, can hear the tiny trips in Peter’s heart when Derek enters the room. His uncle’s at least peripherally aware of him, and that’s plenty. So he gets busy on the next step; moving. His current apartment’s good enough for him but it only has one bedroom, a tiny kitchen, and less hot water than Derek would’ve liked. He has the money for something better but it’s always seemed like too much trouble, having already warded the place and installed a totally new door.

This is for his pack though, so it’s not only worth it, it’s necessary. So just a day after getting back to New York he pays the rent for next month in his current place as an apology for not waiting until his lease is up and takes the door with him. He also digs out the plaster where the wards are anchored, his claws flaking away the paint and prying up the runes underneath. He could leave them since they aren’t harmful but it’s never good to leave magic lying around unmonitored, especially since Junko’s unlikely to forgive him if her wards show up somewhere they aren’t supposed to be.

The new flat’s on the west side of Central Park almost directly opposite Mount Sinai, close enough for Derek to cut through it to the hospital and near enough to the reservoir to avoid the crowds from the sports fields on either side. The flat has a full balcony attached to the living room that faces outwards towards the park to let the sunlight through in the mornings and an open kitchen with enough counter space for four people and so much cupboard room that it's - well, it's fit for werewolves. The bedrooms are well-kept, a good-sized master with two slightly smaller rooms that sit on either side of the hall from each other, and a decently sized office space with a built in wall of bookshelves. There’s two bathrooms including the ensuite in the master and a fire escape outside the room he claims for himself that trails down into the alleyway between the their building and the next.

The space was originally a loft but the owner of the building refurbished it to a flat while leaving the floor plan open and breezy. There’s still exposed beams though and the outer wall is a solid dark grey brick that does something nice for the aesthetic that Derek can’t quite describe. He forks over enough money from the emergency funds Laura had kept at her apartment for the next six months, getting permission from the landlord before installing the front door and hauling the old one down to storage.

Then he contacts Junko and spends an afternoon sitting on the couch watching _Dexter_ and _Downton Abbey_ on Netflix while she walks around the edges of the flat with a bowl of crushed up herbs, spitting her fire into it when she needs a fresh gust. He ends up with a double layer of fire protection and theft warding, accepting that she’ll need to come back once Peter arrives to key him into the main infra-structure of magic. She installs several smaller charms for him against mould and vermin, hanging up a large webbed framework in the hallway between the bedrooms that will function as a kind of dreamcatcher to soften the grip of any nightmares.

It’s nice to know people in the supernatural community, even if he mostly stays on the outskirts. People who know his family name also tend to know at least a basic summary of what happened to his pack, and he’s never been good with pity.

*

_August 31, 2012_

Derek has had fewer nightmares with the bond taking up so much room in his mind, has better focus than he’s had in years with a steady support system telling his wolf he doesn’t have to be so tense, the Alpha will take care of them. Not exactly true right now, but his instincts aren’t always logical and the thought helps anyway. It’s a process, getting used to the feeling again, but he’s so relieved and thankful for it that sometimes when he has an hour or two he’ll just take a walk over to sit with Peter, taking what little pain he can – most of it seemed to be mental, not physical – and taking up the time by quietly reading aloud.

The first full moon passes with Derek sneaking into the hospital to lay beside Peter on the bed and tuck his face into his uncle’s throat, careful not to disturb the feeding tube and IV drip snaking down the side of the bed. It’s the first time Peter moves on his own, his body jolting after the moon rose and clamping a bruising grip down on Derek’s arm where it’s laying over his waist.

“’rek?” Peter slurs round a mouthful of plastic, his heart fast and scared in his chest, eyes finding Derek in the dark room. There are bars of moonlight cast over the floor but they don’t reach the bed and the shadows leave them to stare at each other as those red eyes bore into him.

It’s always been interesting to Derek that Alpha eyes are so different from each other – the colour as varied in shade and hue as the people they belong to. His mother’s had been the colour of fresh blood, so dark they were nearly black with a strength like folded steel. Laura’s had been a deceptively cheerful candy apple red, lighter and shiny and cold. Peter’s are embers in a banked fire, burning at him from his uncle’s gaunt face like a demand.

Even here in this place where they don’t feed Peter enough for his biology, keeping him alive but slowly starving him, there’s a strength to his wolf that’s entirely pleasing to Derek’s. It might just be instincts but it’s been years since he’s been around an Alpha that’s a comfort to him instead of something he has to have to get by. It makes his hands shake a little in relief.

“I’m here,” he says instead of any of that, wrapping his hand around Peter’s arm and pulling until he finds his uncle’s hand, “I’m right here, Peter. Alpha.”

There’s a rough, dry sound like a sob and Peter turns his head slowly with obvious, determined effort until his nose is half-tucked into the side of Derek’s head. The plastic feeding tube is digging into his forehead but Derek doesn’t move except to tilt his chin up a tiny bit and press his throat to Peter’s shoulder lightly.

“W’y?”

It’s choked out into his hair but he feels it in his chest like something sharp and broken, digging up the guilt he’s managed to keep buried this past month, focusing on Peter and what they would need. Now it burrows into him and squeezes his ribs, drying up his words and filling his mouth with the taste of ashes.

He can’t say it, can’t make himself speak the words, so instead he opens himself up to the bond, traces his mind over the scars his sister left there in his wolf. Peter feels them, curls tighter and hoarsely around the places the old chains had held. His spark soothes the last of the ache and Derek all but melts into the bed at the feeling of _pack_.

His throat trills a soft whine, gratitude wetting his eyes even as Peter starts to drift back under. Derek lays there the whole night, Peter dozing in and out, sometimes asking if Derek’s still there and giving a shudder of relief when he’s not alone. The third time he wakes up Derek explains how in a couple hours he’ll have to go because the nurses don’t know he’s here but he’ll be back for visiting hours later that day. Peter clutches at him but after a little while he nods and wraps a palm over the back of Derek’s neck with painstaking effort, smearing his claim there. It doesn’t really help with the fact that he’s got to leave but then Derek hadn’t expected it to.

The scars are slowly starting to ease away from Peter’s face with the Alpha power to encourage the healing, and Derek knows it won’t be much longer until he has to check him out from the hospital before people start looking closer. 

*

Making back out of the hospital is markedly harder than it was getting in but he manages, ducking out a maintenance entrance and finding breakfast in a little diner that has real maple syrup and thick bacon he could eat until he dies. It’s another few hours until the hospital will let him back in so he goes back home for a nap and to sign off on the delivery of the new bed frame he ordered when the man buzzes his door around ten.

He leaves it propped up in the room that will be Peter’s, heading back to the hospital and checking in. He sits with his uncle for several hours until a nurse wakes him up with a sympathetic smile and suggests he goes home for today. Giving his Alpha’s hand a squeeze he nods and thanks her, brushing Peter’s hair back from his face and trailing a palm over his arm before heading out.

Once he’s back home he spends an hour setting up the bed and then crashes in his own until the sun wakes him up the next day. It’s been a long time since he spent a full moon with someone else and it’s telling in how rested he feels, his wolf content and lazy under his skin. It’s nice, good, and he lounges for another hour in bed before getting up.

The week is largely spent at work making up the time he’d taken off for the day before the full moon and the day of. It’s landscaping, largely peaceful and surprisingly rewarding, so he doesn’t mind working an extra day or two.

It’s a quiet couple of weeks after that, but an offhand remark from one of Peter’s nurses about how his scarring seems to be getting better makes him realise he’s not _running_ out of time, he _is_ out of time. He starts the process of withdrawing Peter that afternoon, filling out the paperwork and signing waivers, submitting them to the administration with a small smile. The woman he talks to a few days later asks him questions about how much he knows, is he aware of how much work will be involved, has he done his research, is he prepared at home for the equipment needed – the answers seem to satisfy her that he’s fully aware of what he’s getting into.

She gives him a shrewd, assessing look and he explains how he's been saving up to do this and finally got everything in place, he's just been waiting on his previous lease to end before he brings Peter home It takes over two hours to get everything signed and talk out all her concerns but eventually she nods, agreeing to process the papers and making sure he knows who to contact should he have any questions.

*

_September 21, 2012_

The sun is hidden behind clouds on the day he wheels Peter out of the hospital but he can feel it in his bones just the same, warm and _pack_ and pleased. It makes his wolf want to wriggle and he runs his fingers through Peter’s hair after he loads him into the car. He left his father’s Camaro in storage, buying what he can only refer to as a mom car, but hey it’s got really good safety reviews and it gets great mileage so he’s fine with being the dude who drives the van. It’s also got great storage and the wheelchair doesn’t even need to be folded up before it fits in the back. He does, because he doesn’t want it rolling over his landscaping stuff, but it’s the principle of the thing.

It’s obvious that Peter has started to wake up, at least to Derek. There will be whole minutes where his heart spikes and his eyelids start to move, but they’re never for very long and he never speaks. Those moments fill Derek with both hope and frustration but he’s patient, taking his blanket off his own bed and draping it over Peter’s to give the man his scent at all times when he can’t be there in person if he starts to flicker.

And so they go. Derek keeps working on integrating Peter into the apartment, pulling his books out of the family storage and setting them up in the living room, buying better stuff for the kitchen in general because there was no way Peter would have let him get away with the ones he’d been using to get by. He found that just the knowledge of having someone, especially his Alpha, to look after was lifting him out of the fog he’d settled into over the past five years.

He was raised a werewolf in a family of werewolves; he’s never had much bodily shame, has never had a need for it, especially considering how much the rest of his family worked to make sure he knew he had nothing to be ashamed of. Rather, he was _special_ , not strange, and woe to any fool who might suggest otherwise. He’s probably the best suited person to care for Peter outside perhaps an actual ‘were doctor or nurse. Giving sponge baths and cleaning bedpans actually have a positive effect on his Delta after being unable to help for so long, feeding the need Derek feels to take care of his injured pack mate, his injured _Alpha_. So he just adjusts his schedule, takes an extra day off work here and there. His crew leader allows it when he’s made to understand Derek’s situation, saving him the need of finding a new job.

It’s not that he _has_ to work – well, not for money, anyway. Right now he could probably get away with quitting and cutting his days down to caring for Peter and watching Netflix but his mind has been too loud for him since that first morning after he spent the night with Kate. Just a little too _sharp_ , a little too twisting in his own skull to leave him in peace when he’s alone with his thoughts. It’s why he sleeps with thunderstorms playing, why he works outside with the sounds of the city no matter where he turns, it’s why he doesn’t like people touching him.

And it’s definitely why it drove him insane to have his own sister wrap hooks into his fur and anchor him here like a bitch on a leash.

*

_September 30, 2012_

The second full moon is just as clingy as the first, both of them in Peter’s bed under the blankets, Derek talking quietly about everything that’s happened and how he thinks Peter’s getting better. Explaining how he’s working on getting paperwork falsified to show Peter had gone to a plastic surgeon because once the spark heals the scars there will be questions.

He usually coils his scent up inside him so he doesn’t get noticed by just any stranger, but for Peter he lets it out to fill the apartment. It doesn’t go beyond the walls; he would know, he paid good money for those wards so they better hold. It’s not that he thinks he’d be harassed – not exactly, since Deltas are respected and typically understood to be off-limits in civilised society, but he’s not been interested in anyone the way they would be interested in him, hasn’t been for years. In his darker moments he wonders if Kate broke something in him, questions if that’s not what he deserves for trusting her.

But Peter tucks close and breaths like he just broke into open air for the first time in years, and Derek’s wolf is more than happy to pump out as much happy Delta scent as it can. Derek starts to get a little high from the feedback loop between them in the bond and he spaces out for nearly an hour, the bliss of it soaking down into his belly and tugging at the wolf until he’s sprawled over Peter and humming quietly. The Alpha doesn’t make anything of it except to tighten his hold on Derek when he comes back to himself, looking more than a little choked up at the trust.

Peter doesn’t speak. That’s something that Derek was prepared for but Peter is obviously struggling with. He can make sounds but struggles with swallowing sometimes. It’s not something Derek can help him with, really and that frustrates both of them. He’s done the reading, understands the basic pathology of it, even has exercises for Peter to work on once he fully wakes up, but he can’t just breathe or swallow or talk for him – he wouldn’t want to. The Alpha spark keeps him breathing easily enough to make his sounds during the full moon but Derek isn’t sure that will last once he wakes up.

Derek’s perfectly fine with the silence to be honest. Not that he wouldn’t love to hear his uncle’s voice, but he couldn’t complain right now if he tried. Something that Peter doesn’t yet understand is that he’s already a better Alpha in an hour of quiet holding than Laura was in the last six years with her constantly talking. And god that’s hard to think about; his uncle’s lost six years of his life and will never get them back. For him the fire has happened just a few minutes ago, the wounds are fresh and raw even if his broken bonds have scarred over.

Derek finds himself talking about his work with the St. Mary’s Park and installing a trio of weeping willows in the Trinity Church Cemetery up by Sugar Hill. He’s worked on quite a few inner-city parks and playgrounds with his team and he finds himself explaining how working with the earth gives him a grounding sense of surety that's helped keep his wolf centered since the fire. To have the scents of green things, dirt under his fingernails and grass-stains on his jeans, it calms some part of him that longs for wide spaces and leaf-littered paths through the trees.

Peter listens until the night ends, slipping back under until his grip goes slack, his arms relaxing back to give sides like dead weight. It takes Derek only a few seconds to decide he doesn’t feel like moving and he’s asleep before he can question it, snugged tight to Peter’s side, the sense of pack pressing him to the bed with warm hands.

*

_September 6, 2012_

Derek doesn’t report Laura missing until her work calls him as her emergency contact to try and get in touch with her five days after he returns to New York. She’s apparently been on a two week vacation from work, presumably taken so she could deal with whatever had happened in California, but since they no longer live together and they haven’t really talked in a long time, police don’t look at him for more than a cursory glance when he reports her missing.

He pulls up the emotions from five years ago when he had realised that Laura was no longer the sister he’d grown up with, that losing their family and the pressure of the Alpha spark had apparently twisted her, and cries until his face is blotchy when they can’t find her. _She’s on the other side of the country buried in the woods._ The policeman who brings him the news is sympathetic, promising they they’ll keep looking, not to give up hope, but Derek’s already wondering how long he’ll need to wait after they called the search off to take control of their joint account and get hers signed over to him as her next of kin.

He doesn’t doubt that the police searched long and hard, vivacious young girl like Laura with a family tragedy background, pretty and doing well at work with a bright future ahead of her. They’ll never find her. 

It’s not that Derek didn’t love his sister, because he loved her with all his heart, would have taken on the world for her, done anything in his power to make her happy. She just stopped being his sister when she put chains on him, locked him away and decided he was too stupid and naïve to understand the risks of helping their only surviving relative.

The thing is. The thing is Derek doesn’t go to the police station right away. It’s perfectly understandable that he would go to her apartment first to see if she’s there, look around to see if he can find anything on where she might have gone. So he does, making sure not to put on his gloves until he’s gone inside and touched both the bathroom and bedroom doors, turning the bathroom faucet on and off before pulling on the leather.

What he finds doesn’t really surprise him, he knew _something_ had lured Laura home, though it is confusing. He tucks the photos and envelopes away in his bag, rescues a tiny fern he remembers from when they first got to New York, and makes copies of all the legal documents on their family bank accounts, lawyer transcripts, and hospital records for Peter she has, putting the originals in his bag and replacing them with the copies. He also clears out the stash of emergency money she has hidden away in her bathroom closet, deciding that whoever searches here doesn’t need to have any idea how much she kept on hand. He also takes some time to go through her laptop and make sure there’s nothing incriminating in it, either towards Beacon Hills or the supernatural in general. He loads all her files onto a USB and leaves it unplugged and on to kill the battery.

First he makes sure she has her own wards for muffling sounds and then he knocks over the kitchen table and chairs, scatters the DVD case by the hallway over the floor. He breaks the shower rod off in the bathroom, tears the curtain and snaps the towel rack in two, leaves a dent in the wall with the doorknob and breaks the lock on it like he did the front door. A few picture frames get knocked off the wall on his way back to the living room, leaving tiny grooves near the places where the frames were like someone clawed at the wall while being dragged. He'll get the ones of their Family back from evidence eventually anyways. Making sure he hasn’t missed anything he leaves her phone on the floor in the kitchen with the screen cracked, her files already scrubbed of anything suspicious.

Looking around at his handiwork he almost wishes he had some blood but thinks he’s done alright to make it look like some kind of break in and kidnapping. Then he goes to his apartment, shredding and dumping his gloves into several different dumpsters and tossing the last bits into the East River on his way over. Once he gets home he puts the documents in a filing cabinet, stuffing them in alongside his own records he’s kept over the years like his resume, the jobs he’s done for the landscaping crew he works for, and his own personal bank transcripts. The money he counts out to be just over eighty-thousand dollars.

It seems like so much after six years of never _ever_ touching the money he knows is there, but it’s not even a drop in the very deep well dug out by multiple generations of pooled pack funds and all the insurance payouts. Putting it out of his head for now, he cuts the money down pragmatically, a hefty half of it going into their rent for the next half a year. Splitting the other half, he puts some into the new van he bought, contracting the _kumiho_ from the bookshop on Hillside Avenue to reinforce it for him.

The rest he puts into purchasing a full setup of used hospital equipment, asking the staff of Mount Sinai what he needs for home care with a coma patient and then deciding what Peter can do without. He’s already healing, could always breathe on his own even before the spark was passed to him, and Derek can literally monitor his heart without any kind of equipment so the list shortens considerably. It’s a sweet, cloying, back-of-the-throat-make-your-teeth-ache kind of irony that Laura’s money will go into helping Peter recover in the safety of Derek’s home.

Lastly he arranges a consultation with a pack out in Pennsylvania about how to help a pack member recovering from a coma. He takes a day to drive out and do it in person as a sign of respect for information they don’t have to share, but it turns out to be a good visit. They give helpful advice, not only pointing out some things he hadn’t considered before, but also offering some recommendations on who he can contact when the time comes for both mental and physical therapy. He thanks them, pays them for their time, and asks if he can call again if he has more questions, which they agree to.

After a day goes by in which he finally stops his bombardment of Laura’s phone, having started the day her office called him, enough time has passed that he feels secure in going to the closest precinct and reporting her missing.

*

_October 4, 2012_

The first two weeks that pass after Derek brings Peter home are mostly full of Derek absorbing Peter's care into his daily schedule and making sure he's performing his new duties correctly. Derek’s agreement with the hospital stipulates that a specialist visits twice a week to check up on the patient and make sure that all guidelines are being followed, so he checks once with the man about the legs exercises but they don't talk beyond that. It’s something that worries Derek at first, the possibility of someone seeing Peter wake up or noticing the fading scars, what would he do if the specialist reported something suspicious? He finds out though that it’s a little amazing, all the different fields that supernaturals have spread through.

When the hospital calls to make sure he's alright with Peter's care being transferred to a different doctor, he doesn't really think anything of it. The trouble with growing up surrounded by werewolves and witches is he never had many dealings with human hospitals so he's unsure if this is normal or not. He doesn't want to draw attention to their situation so he accepts - one human doctor is much the same as another, right? They'll be here to check in on Peter, not chat with him, so he's fine with it until the receptionist - probably going for comforting or reassurance - tacks on that this new specialist requested their case. By that point though it would only cause questions if he refuses, so now their stuck.

This woman is different, he can tell the moment he opens the door the next day. She smells of hot sand and dry winds, her features softly angular, her face dark tan and heart-shaped. Something of _cat_ in her bearing, the musk of a heavy, thickly furred animal wafting around her body. She doesn’t move, doesn’t enter his den. Instead she waits patiently, her black hair piled up in a bun on her head, her grey-green eyes watching him as his wolf raises it’s hackles.

He doesn’t quite understand the feelings he’s getting but the woman is _dangerous_ , his instincts are telling him, the press of teeth at the back of his mind filling his mouth with the stretch of fangs. His gums prickle and the canines are taut behind his lips, the whisper of a growl in his throat even as he tries to calm down, his eyes flashing flatly when he blinks rapidly.

She interrupts his little meltdown when she jerks at the sight, startled. He’s watchful, taking in the wide eyes she gives him and the bared throat she carefully tilts her head for. Her face is slightly chagrined, a contrite twist to her mouth, “I apologise. I knew who he was, who you were, but I didn’t know – I didn’t realise you were a Delta. I’m sorry. My name is Dr. Ahnya Carter and I’m the specialist assigned by Mount Sinai hospital for Peter Hale’s biweekly check-up. I mean no harm.”

Derek nods stiffly, unsure on whether or not he can force himself to invite her in but willing to be polite. It’s a close thing and he nearly shuts the door in her face but he manages to step back and to the side, allowing her a couple of feet to slip past him. To her credit she gets verbal permission before stepping inside but the moment her foot hits the carpet Derek has to lock his muscles to keep from lunging. What _is_ she – her scent is relaxed, could even be considered meek in her regret, but somehow she’s still so intimidating that his protective instincts are _vibrating_.

Apparently he’s broadcasting pretty loudly because she lets her bag drop to the ground and puts her papers on it before sitting down right where she’s standing. Her wrists are exposed to him, her face as open as it can be considering she smells like a cat and cats are by nature subtle and wary. There’s a bit of feather oil about her too, mixing with the sandy scent until he’s staring at her incredulously. The doctor doesn’t object when he leans a bit closer and takes a rudely deep breathe through his mouth, tasting the sun-drenched desert wind on his tongue.

“Sorry,” he clears his throat once he’s gotten himself together enough to back up to the kitchen table and sit on a chair like the actual civilised person he could swear he is. It’s been a long time since he reacted that viscerally and his hands shake minutely as he runs them over his hair to flatten where it’s prickled up like the hackles of his Delta.

“No, I’m sorry, you have nothing to apologise for. As I said, I wasn’t aware – but that’s no excuse – I should’ve called ahead to speak with you before just arriving like this. I knew you were both werewolves and I’m used to the common Beta being protective, but I’ve never worked directly with a pack that had a Delta.”

Okay so he knows in retrospect what just happened. He’s not stupid, he knows that he’s been subconsciously denning for months now but Derek would like to point out that his weird, instinctual, like, hindbrain understanding is totally different from being confronted with a predator at his stoop. His wolf is in overdrive at the awareness of a fully-grown sphinx at his front door when he has a comatose Alpha inside and he’s the only line of defence. Completely and utterly terrifying is a decent way to describe the feeling, though it doesn’t cover the overwhelming need to smash her perfectly nice face full-frontal into the nearest potted plant, shove her back into the hallway, and slam the door shut behind her. But maybe that’s just Derek.

He offers her a seat and she slowly stands and brings her things over, brushing off her slacks and sitting opposite him with her hands flat on the table. He wasn’t aware how he’d tensed back up but now his shoulders drop a little and he lets his lips twitch ruefully.

“First time for both of us then,” he finally offers, rubbing his forehead and resisting the urge to look in the direction of the hallway. It’s ridiculous, he _knows_ , okay? He gets that she’s a doctor, can see her hospital badge clipped to her bag, Peter’s files stacked up to the side, but a very large part of him just wants to toss her out the fire escape. There are stairs, she’d live, but he’d get an embarrassing amount of satisfaction out of it. He _doesn’t do it_ , of course, but the window is cracked and he figures he can always make the attempt if something goes wrong.

“Mr. Hale?” her voice is soft and her brows are crinkled in concern, “Do you want me to leave? I can arrange for a different specialist to take your uncle’s case. I only took it away from Dr. Foster because he’s unaware of the supernatural but we have several practitioners and specialists who can fulfil the requirements. My feelings won’t be hurt, I understand defensive instincts can be very strong in these kinds of situations.”

It’s the compassion in her voice that pulls him out of his racing thoughts, helping him to calm down and absorb what she’s saying. She’s patient with him, letting him gather his thoughts, her body language obviously open and non-threatening, her head still tilted to the side to let him see her throat. It doesn’t fix the churning in his gut, but it does help. It soothes his wolf to see her exposed this way, humble at the tips of his claws.

Metaphorically, of course. He wouldn’t put his claws at a sphinx’s throat unless there was no other option. He can’t see her wings, can’t feel the oppressive force he knows they have in battle, but he’s trying to learn honesty with himself. There’s not a lot he could do to even the playing field between them if she wanted him dead. She doesn’t because she’s just a person, not a monster. A doctor. _Peter’s_ doctor, that lump of good sense speaks up from his mind, poking his defensive posture until his shoulders grind reluctantly back down from where they’ve managed to creep upwards towards his ears.

“No,” he grits, working the words around until he can say them without his teeth bared, “No, I have to get used to this. The world isn’t going to wait for me to freak out every time someone scary comes along. No offense.”

The woman smiles wryly, “None taken, I am a lot to spring on someone, especially a denning Delta with an injured pack mate. I’m just here for Peter’s check-up.”

And there his scalp goes, bristling up over the crown of his head in a curt shiver. She didn’t mean it like that, he can tell, but he can’t help but register a threat anyway. He suppresses the sensation of ants crawling up the back of his neck for a polite nod and standing to show her to Peter’s room.

There’s a tense moment in the hallway at the threshold of the master suite when the sphinx gets a little too close too fast, but they get past it without more than a warning grit of fangs and a blinking flash of silver. Peter’s eyes are shut when they come into the room and Derek can tell from his heartbeat he’s deep under the grip of the coma, not nearly as close as he’s been skirting these past few days. He’s not sure what that means, whether it’s a good thing or something he should be worried about – and it suddenly occurs to him. He has someone he can ask now, someone who at least understands the situation, if not the specifics.

He won’t lie, he doesn’t trust Dr. Carter, but it’s not like he really trusts anybody else either. So it’s not her fault. They end up talking for a while about what’s been going on with Peter and what exercises he’s researched for when his Alpha starts to wake up. The doctor can’t tell him to what degree Peter will recover or how quickly but she’s hopeful because of the rate he’s been progressing since the spark transferred to him.

“Werewolves are one of the most resilient supernatural species in the world, Mr. Hale. I can’t speak for his mental or psychological health but from what I can see Peter stands a very good chance of making a full physical recovery. You’ll understand I hope why I can’t promise anything but I can offer my opinion.”

“Which is?” Derek isn’t sure how he gets the words out but his breath is suddenly in his head floating around instead of in his lungs where it should be.

“I believe it should only be a few more months before we see a marked improvement. Now, you have to be aware that sometimes these things plateau; it may get harder to see improvement from day-to-day. What we have to remember is to see the big picture from where we started, not where we want to be. The process of recovery, even with an alpha werewolf’s physiology, takes time and patience.” She’s so kind that Derek wants to hate her, wants to crouch over his uncle’s still form and snarl at her. But he just _can’t;_ her body language is all sympathy, strangely submissive like she knows how he’s feeling. He still wishes she weren’t watching him, wishes she wasn’t here where they’re vulnerable, but he can’t bring himself to be rude to her when she’s given him so much hope.

“Thank you,” he manages instead, and she accepts without comment. Bringing forward her papers she writes for a minute while he gathers his composure enough to finish their discussion.

It’s an eye-opening visit, and not only because of what she can tell him about Peter’s situation. It’s not the first time he’s interacted with a doctor – he had cousins who weren’t as ‘supernaturally inclined’ as he and his sisters were, after all – but it is the first time he’s gotten to see first-hand how different it is when the doctor in question is fully aware of the situation. He’s a little stunned at what a huge difference it makes to be able to vent about the frustration he’s feeling. Not only because of his Delta instincts but also just as someone who’s never had to deal with a prolonged recovery like this. The worst his cousins had ever had was a case of measles and a case of mild asthma.

He must've still been openly broadcasting his emotions because before she leaves Dr. Carter hands him a list of names. She explains that they’re the names of several supernaturally aware psychologists and therapists in the area.

“Hey,” she mildly interrupts his attempt to argue, “This is me giving you the names of people I would trust to take care of Peter’s mental well-being. If you want to talk to one of them – or even a few – that’s your business. I’m not going to lie – you being healthy would help you both, but I won’t pretend to understand what you’ve been through, what you’re _still_ going through. I can’t, and to say I can would be disrespectful, so I won’t. I’m not here to push you or pressure you into a corner, I’m here to help Peter. However I can.”

He does take the list of names in the end, sticking it with the rest of Peter’s files. She’s right, it isn’t her business. Still, he thanks her and walks her out, unsure after he shuts the door if he did it to be polite or to make sure she’s left his den.

_It can be both_ , he finally tells himself firmly.  

*

_February 8, 2013_

Peter’s started to open his eyes briefly when Derek touches him but he’s as quiet as ever, his eyes a murky, fevered purple. His face is healthy again, if more than a little gaunt, his ear is red but no longer raw-looking, his neck and shoulder smoothing out more by the day. There’s still heavier scarring down his side and along his hip, his leg so dark red it’s nearly black and shiny like a beetle’s carapace after so many years. It’ll take time, but Carter assures Derek that he’s healing, and the visible signs of it make Derek grin stupidly to himself as he waters the little aloe plant.

Not all of the waiting is filled with excitement though. Derek doesn’t have to search himself hard at all to find the thick knot of worry tucked up under his ribcage. He can feel it soaking into his mind some days, thoughts whispering through reminding him that he’s going to have to tell Peter. He’s going to have to explain what happened to their family, why their pack was all but wiped out – he’s going to have to tell him whose fault it was.

It’s something he never told Laura, and he wonders now what her reaction would’ve been to knowing that her baby brother let a killer in the door. Whenever he thinks about his family, about that night, all he can see is a scene from _Watership Down._

**_“_ ** _Our warren, destroyed._

_Destroyed? How?_

_Men came. Filled in the burrows._

_Couldn't get out._

_There was a strange sound._

_Hissing, the air turned bad._

_Runs blocked with dead bodies._

_I couldn't get out._

_Everything turned mad._

_Warren, herbs, roots, grass..._

_... all pushed into the earth._

_\- Men have always hated us. **”**_

The mix of emotions tends to make him retreat from the memories but with Peter starting to wake up more and more he doesn’t have that luxury. He can’t suppress it much longer, he’s going to have to deal with it, and it’s getting closer every day. He knows it’s not healthy, refusing to deal with what happened, but what is he supposed to do? At this point he’s not sure if he _could_ talk to someone, much less that it’s worth it. What good would talking about it really do – it’s not like it would change anything. Not like it would bring them back.

But the day finally comes after Peter’s been Alpha for nearly six months that his eyes open and he tracks Derek around the room. His eyes settle on blue and his throat works around the tube, rasping something that sounds like ‘water’, might be ‘what’, could be ‘wait’. Derek barely has time to blink at him, startled, before his eyes are closed and he’s gone again.

He sits by Peter’s bed all day that day, alternating between reading and talking quietly to his uncle, sometimes just staring out the window. It’s a strange argument of feelings in his stomach; the relief and excitement of Peter finally being lucid enough to try talking versus the dread and guilt of having to explain how Derek killed their family because he trusted the wrong person.

So he sits there until he can’t, until he has to go eat, go do something to settle the roiling anxiety threatening to crawl up the back of his throat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me just say, go look at some of the prices for a flat on the edge of Central Park - it's ridiculous.
> 
> I encourage anyone who's never read Watership Down to do so. It's an excellent book and the original passage on that conversation is much more visceral and has better imagery, it just wouldn't fit here. Also this short conversation was always very powerful to me. 
> 
>  
> 
> [This is the animated version from the 1978 adaptation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzirfrSn_KQ)
> 
> Please let me know what you think!! (Not of the link, of the story.)
> 
> (Though, I guess you could tell me what you thought of the link.)


	2. there is no such  thing as a linear life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And now Peter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be honest I liked writing this chapter more. Don't get me wrong, I love Derek, and I loved writing him, but to me Peter's experiences lent such an intimate, raw feeling to this whole chapter. Derek's chapter needed to happen, but Peter's was fun to write :D
> 
> ****Here's my warning for suffocation. It's not a true case of suffocating but all the panic and mental trauma is there so I'm putting this here. Be gentle with yourselves.

_November 26, 2005_

Peter doesn’t actually remember killing his niece.

He can’t decide whether or not he’s glad for that, but there’s nothing he can do to change it so he’s forced to accept it. He _does_ remember waking up in the hospital with a woman standing over him, her voice sugary grateful as she speaks to someone he can’t see. Later he’ll place the time of the memory as being soon after the fire, will understand what the bandages over his right eye mean, the padding covering his face and neck and arm, but right now it feels like a collar has been snapped onto his neck and he wants to scream, to rip at it.

His body won’t obey him, he can’t move, can’t speak, can barely understand what’s being said over the sudden roar of loss gutting through him when he reaches for his bonds to call for help. The empty places have the texture of ripped up blades of grass left out in the sun, brittle and thin and broken. His pack, his family – _gone_. All the threads, the masterpiece of bonds inside him has been burned away, _he_ has been burned away, the taste of ashes put in his mouth.

The woman cuts through the fog, laying a hand over his throat like a slip of silk. Never has a threat been so real, so present, as that soft palm. It’s barely a brush through the padding protecting his pain, the feeling traveling through it in a muffled, terrifying kind of way. She squeezes almost gently, petting at his covered jugular like a child might pet a puppy, her expression cat content. The tips of her nails drag lightly over the edges of the bandages, digging under the lip of gauze to scrape at skin that feels like raw meat. Her blonde hair is lit up by the window like a halo of gold, like a ring of _flame._

“The nurses think you’re not in there, pup, they think you’re all but brain-dead. But we know better, don’t we?” her voice is coy, like she’s inviting him in on a secret, “I know you’re in there, your kind is too hardy, too monstrous, to be defeated by something like this. But I don’t think you’ll be going anywhere anytime soon, mhm? I think not.”

Her nails knead at him, dragging upwards to tap on the thing inside his mouth, tilting his chin up in a mockery of respect. There's a pleased little quirk tugging at her lips, “I’ve never understood why people keep game preserves, you know. Why not just kill it, don’t play with your food, blah blah blah, you know? Of course you do.”

He’s already delirious in his agony - later he'll realise he'd already metabolised the pain medication they must've given him - and isn’t truly paying attention, his body lax while his mind screams, but something about her tone makes the hair on the back of his neck want to stand up. It doesn’t, but he feels the shiver inside all the same.

“But now I think I get it. There’s something to this feeling of power, wolf. Knowing that no matter how hard or fast your prey runs, they can’t actually escape. Maybe you let one or two go to grow bigger, build up the population, prolong the gene pool, but the fence is always there, and so are you. I may take up big game hunting. Well, _small game_ , compared to your kind, I suppose.”

Her hand cups his neck,  _squeezing_ until he can feel her gripping the thing in his throat, massaging her hold so he can't focus on anything but the feel of it rubbing against him inside.

His brain is seething, fear clogging his nose and throat, choking at him with a strange sort of grinding panic even though the tubes plugged into him make sure he can still breathe. His vision pops and tilts crazily as she very minutely shakes the fistful she has, clenching down on his jugular until he can feel the tickling of blood streaming down and wetting the bed under his shoulders. There at the back of his tongue it slides a little against his tonsils, the hateful feeling of it keeping his mouth open all he can register as the length of it moves slightly all the way down into him. It shakes against his insides, slipping further down into his stomach for a moment. It's the closest he gets to moving, the hesitation in his automatic muscles that might've snapped something out relaxing as she stills her hand and resumes that steady pressure. 

He barely registers it, locked in a battle, screaming inside with the need to  _breathe_ \- he's going to  _die_ , he can't even swallow, can't stop her, can't even blink away the tears. Air is forced into him but it feels like he's fading, like she's filling him with wet clay, the smell of her perfume soaking into his bandages. Somewhere in the back of his mind beneath the roar of suffocation is the pathetic, crawling ache, pleading with her to just kill him, just slit his throat ( _it would be so easy, like a sigh_ ) please God just  _end it_.

Years later he'll understand why she doesn't, will have the terrible knowledge that he meant nothing but fifteen minutes of pleasure to her. He'll realise how strongly she got off on just - just holding his throat and knowing that he could do  _nothing_. Staring down at her own death made impotent, cradling his life in her palm like a frantic butterfly and choosing to let it go, knowing she could always come back and take it because he was  _nothing_. He couldn't even wipe away his own tears.

She does it for him, softly smearing them away from the left side of his face where the skin is free from gauze and brutally spreading her own scent.

He doesn’t last much longer after that, too close to the edge of the black insanity creeping in around the burns, but he won’t ever forget the delighted way she smiles then, like a young girl in her glee. Her lips are red as a cherry popsicle, her teeth white as bleached bone when she opens her mouth and giggles, “Just think of it as me picking off the weak stock from the herd, if that makes it easier to understand, wolf.”

*

_2005 - 2012_

It won’t be until later that he realises exactly what happened, why Laura was even _in_ Beacon Hills, was even back within reach of his wolf. The most confusing part is that he doesn’t remember anyone else being with him when he hunted, those frenzied chases through the preserve. He remembers the taste of iron and the texture of kicking deer muscle rolling over his tongue, the feel of the moon in his fur, the thrum of his feet hitting the ground. Nobody would have been safe around him, surely.

Then he realises, his wolf would have been going largely by scent, would have been driven to leave things alone if they smelled like him. The woman, the nurse, whatever her name was. She had to have been the one, had to have seen him, apparently followed him and taken pictures. He traces the mail later, wonders why she sent those pictures to Laura of all people, what she'd hoped to gain. He supposes they’ll never know, because from what they can tell she must have gotten too close to him between sending the pictures and Laura arriving.

She’s listed as Missing in Beacon Hills, and Peter really _hopes_ he didn’t eat her, but honestly if he did he’s not that fussed. The woman apparently followed a werewolf out into the middle of the woods as it hunted – like a stalker sneaking to take perverted pictures of a girl in the bathroom – and got eaten for her folly. The world probably won’t miss her much.

*

There are moments of lucidity over what he now knows to be the course of years, chopped up sights and sounds that make little sense even once he has the capacity to think about them. He thinks there’s something in his throat, his lips are dry and his breathing is strange around the – tube? He recalls hearing Derek’s voice, remembers the drip of something above him and the hum of machines, the harsh scent of scrubbed walls and floors clogging his nose to any other smells. Once he remembers hearing a tapping and vaguely seeing in his peripheral a bird at the window, a tiny shadow hopping to and fro before disappearing like a wisp of smoke into the brighter daylight.

A couple times he wakes up enough to feel something tugging at him, something cramping in his head like scar tissue flattening out. He wants to whine, to twitch violently away, but his limbs aren’t his own. It’s like his arms and legs and neck, even his eyes and mouth, have been replaced by heavy ropes unable to move. The madness of straining forward eventually tires him back out but the feeling isn’t something easy to forget. Like having a foot fall asleep and _knowing_ you’ll move it only for nothing to change, not even a single toe moving even as your mind presses and shoves at it.

It’s terrifying both times it happens, to have a front row seat to his own body and not be able to take possession of it. The term for it is so plain, so not fitting for the experience. When he mentions it to his therapist in the months after properly waking up she calls it ‘sleep paralysis’, though she admits that it might’ve just been the coma itself.

Sometimes he thinks he's awake, thinks he hears Derek talking somewhere close by, though soon enough he's lost the meaning of the words. Vowels stretch out and elongate strangely, bunching up in the next moment so his mind trips over them, unable to feel out the tone and sounds of the letters. Just hearing his nephew's voice helps, like a hand brushing his in the darkness to let him know he's not alone. He can never pull himself towards that voice, his body limp and numb, but even when his mind fades he has a sense that he's not abandoned, only very hurt. There is not a word to describe how comforting that belief is.

*

_July 31, 2012_

It’s a horrifying thing, to wake up and remember the snap of bones, the gush of something hot and wet running down the creases of his lips. Her face is so pale, the ridges of her brows relaxing into a facsimile of the one he’s known for eighteen years, and all he can see is her little moon face with the tiny pink bow, red and wailing as the emissary wipes her down. He’s suddenly eight years old again, watching in awe as his big sister gives a sobbing gust of relief and the shriek of birth rings in their ears.

Bright pink cheeks fat and puffy, traces of whelping blood behind her itty-bitty ears and a smudge of black hair over the crown of her head. Ten tiny fingers, curled up into fists so small he could wrap both in one hand, perfect tiny feet with the most amazing scrunched up toes he’s ever seen. He loves her immediately, he’ll protect her forever. He tells his sister as much, tells her wife the same, and they grin tiredly at him. He gets to hold her as they check Talia over, making sure everything that should be out has come out and nothing inside has torn.

Laura, they told the family weeks ago. She’s amazing, he decides as she screws up her face at him and lets loose the longest, shrillest, most _indignant_ shriek he’s ever heard. He’s very impressed with this tiny girl.

Now her face is smeared with his blood instead of her mother’s, her eyes dimming back to brown as her rage and fear leaves them, a burst blood vessel in one giving a rictus of Alpha. It doesn't heal. Suddenly he breaks and runs, his wolf not fully understanding the pain, only seeking to outrun it.

They never do.

*

_August 31, 2012_

The first time he wakes up with someone beside him he feels something rush through him, feels strength where there hadn’t been any.

“I’m here,” Derek says, his hand finding Peter’s, “I’m right here, Peter. Alpha.”

His breath catching in his chest, he tries to ask why but the word comes out all mangled around the tube in his mouth. He can’t makes more words come out, can’t push them past the tube weighing his tongue down, but he thinks Derek can hear them anyway. Why did they leave him, didn’t they hear him screaming for them? Why is Derek here, why is his mind so quiet and empty, why is this happening? He aches as he moves, burying his nose into Derek’s hair and unsure now if he really wants an answer.

Something’s opening in his bond though, that hard, firm cord coiling him and Derek together from Alpha to Delta. It feels unbreakable, so fragile he’s afraid to touch it, might rub the dust off of its wings like a butterfly and kill it. The feeling of helplessness pulls him in where he might’ve shied away, and he feels out the scars put under his hand, the Order torn into the wolf’s pelt leaving bald spots where the fur has rubbed away. _Oh, Derek, baby. Laura, sweetheart, what did you_ do?

He loses time for an hour or so but when he comes back Derek’s still there, still holding him and tucked into his throat as close as he can without disturbing the breathing tubes in his nose. He loses time there with his nephew curled up against him, jerking a little and registering the tilt of moonlight over the wall where it wasn’t a moment ago – was it a moment ago? Jesus where’s Derek – he’s here, he’s still here, murmuring with his throat against Peter’s shoulder. His heartbeat is steady there, the rhythm settling the Alpha in him before it has time to do more than grumble.

Derek tells him he can’t stay – Peter knew that probably but he’s still overcome by the wave of bleakness cresting in his chest as Derek explains that he’ll be back later in the day even if Peter won’t know he’s there. His hand is still clasped lightly over the back of Derek’s neck, holding his scent there, brushing it through the back of his hair and wishing he could somehow put it under the boy’s skin. Man. Derek’s not a boy anymore.

 _Peter’s_ not a boy anymore, at least he doesn’t think so. He remembers vaguely the way the old man at the coffee shop would always call him a brat, didn’t matter that he was almost twenty-six, the man had been there when his mom had been in high school, had seen maybe four generations of Hales. He wants to ask how long he’s been here, how much time he’s lost. He still feels twenty-six, still a little young, old enough to boss his nieces and nephews around but young enough for Talia to scruff him playfully and for his mom to call him her _‘sweet boy’_ , for his dad to take him under his arm because his dad was unreasonably tall and ruffle his hair. Can he still be young if he’s now the oldest?

He jerks again – Derek, he’s here, he’s right here, the light’s moved again, _focus_ , he should be able to just _focus_. It gets worse, he thinks, but suddenly he can’t move his arms anymore and then he feels the moon slipping out of him, his mind dripping out of his hold like ice melting in his palm, the darkness dancing around the edge of his view. It leaps closer in dizzy flirting movements, curling up around his mind until he loses track of whether or not he’s even awake. Whether he’s even aware.

*

_September 20, 2012_

It’s not something he would ever want Derek to know, but the sudden and disorienting shift from one place to the next is something out a nightmare. It’s like losing time but now he doesn’t even have the reassurance that at least he’s in the same place. No, he feels like he shuts his eyes for a moment and then opens them somewhere else. Even the air is different, the lighting has changed completely, the bed is newer and stiffer under him. It’s strange to realise that even the tube in his mouth tastes different, doesn’t have the teeth marks the old one had. The breathing tubes are gone but the IV is still attached to his arm and he can smell the plastic under the covers where he assumes his catheter is.

Derek is there, holding onto him the same as before, talking to him. It’s not quite idle chatter, though it is quiet and slow. Derek’s giving him details about what’s happened, the steps Derek’s taking for their future, it’s all the mark of an excellent Delta, a good caregiver and a capable protector. Everything he knew Derek would be as he got older, in other words. Peter wants to talk, wants to tell Derek how proud he is of him, how he always knew what a wonderful wolf he would be, but he can barely breathe with the emotion so instead he presses closer.

Then suddenly Derek’s scent is there, filling up the space and making the air nearly vibrate with the scent of a pleased Delta. It’s intoxicating and overwhelming and Peter can’t deal with the way Derek starts to go boneless over him, the posture both protective and relaxed. Everything in his nephew’s body is telling Peter’s wolf that he’s not a failure, that his Delta has so much faith in him, that ‘here he’s right here trusting Peter, see?’ It’s wonderful and terrifying.

When Derek starts to come to Peter brings him closer, holds him tighter, trying to show Derek that he cares too. He’s trying to be there, wants to be a good – the title gets lost in his head for a moment and in its place are the faces of the women who wore it. _Joanna, Cecelia, Talia, Laura._ His grandmother, mother, sister and niece. Before them had been his great-grandfather Theodore, but he hardly remembers him at all.

Their pack has been mostly matriarchal within the past couple of centuries but it’s always been based on who would make the best Alpha. Yes, the Alpha's children were trained for the duty but any children in the family who showed an aptitude for leadership were given the same information, the whole pack was expected to know basic inter-pack politics and understand certain things. From there the predictions for Alpha could be assumed. Not always a wolf, but always a leader.

His great-great-granduncle had been a witch, not a wolf, had mated into the family under the approval of his Peter’s great-great-great-grandaunt, Emmeline Natalia Hale. When she’d stepped down the spark had chosen Bregan instead of Lena, his wife and Emmaline’s daughter. The pack had flourished under him, their land had been given new life through his magic, and he had passed on his magical talent to his son, who became his cousin Theodore’s Left Hand when the time came to pass on the spark.

 _Focus._ Oh. He wants to be a good Alpha, but the lighting has changed again and Derek’s asleep – _focus_ , how long did he lose? What time is it? There are no clocks here, why would he need one, there’s only the moonlight coming in through the window to slant over the blankets, a wordless frustration building in his belly. Is it even the same night? It must be, please it has to be. How is he supposed to know? Will Derek tell him, or did he already and Peter’s forgotten?

That’s a new thought. What if he’s not falling asleep but just forgetting these broad swathes of time? Does Derek know? How could he, if Peter doesn’t? He lays there in the darkness, gripping his nephew desperately and trying to _will_ himself to stay awake, to remember, until long after he’s fallen asleep.

*

_September 2012 - January 2013_

Later Peter will be able to remember things more clearly, will take comfort in things like the damp smell of soil, the touch of a quilt draped heavy over him, the scent of tea steeping somewhere close by. Sounds of the television, the glimpses he gets of his nephew as Derek takes care of him, cleans his body and exercises his limbs for him to make the muscles move. He sees his little aloe plant more than once, sitting on the window sill to the side of the room, thick green leaves curling towards the ceiling like a sharpened rose. At some point there’s a fern beside it he thinks but it’s gone the next time he sees the window so he can’t be sure.

He smells all kinds of plants mixed in with his nephew’s base scent, from lamb’s ear to purple thistle and the brittle, hardy odour of nettle. Sometimes he smells algae and pond water, sometimes the hard bite of root vegetables or the bitter tang of oranges. Once he smells the echo of wisteria and chamomile like his mother used to wear and it sends a calm through him until he’s not sinking into the darkness so much as floating along its banks.

Peppermint, Ginger, Raspberries, Caramel. Something dark and earthy, maybe something citrus? If his mouth is open he can taste it, lingering there on the roof of his mouth. The drip in his arm keeps him hydrated but the taste of tea in his mouth starts to keep him sane, helps to ground him in those moments where his mind belongs to him. Sometimes he wakes up when Derek’s not there, the flat is silent and still, sounds of a cat calling from the fire escape and classical music coming from somewhere under him. It’s nice to wake up and have no expectations put on him, nobody there to witness it, just him and the cat.

*

Other moments are not so peaceful.

Sometimes he wants to rage, to scream and howl and rip at himself. He’s glad he can’t move in those moments, glad he has to lay there quietly when he would destroy this place, this den, that Derek has worked so hard on.

The mind is just as vulnerable as the body to starvation, Peter finds out. When you don’t feed the body it will start to eat your organs, your muscle, and when you don’t feed your mind it will decide you don’t need your focus, your time. It will slip and slide away from thoughts you were having into blank listlessness, will steal fragments of knowledge until looking at the world through your mind is like looking through a leaf that’s been chewed on by a caterpillar.

Distressing…is not quite accurate enough to describe it. It’s a feeling like panic in the pit of your belly, tangling your guts until they cramp. The kind of panic where your mind just goes numb with the stress, scrambling to move, to act, to do _something_. The sensation is somewhat like freefall, like being lost in the woods at night, like realising you’ve been tossed out into sea with no solid strip of land in place to plant your feet on. What’s below you? What’s there? Did something touch your foot? The instinctual, _visceral_ panic that traps the scream in your throat it’s so sudden, locks your muscles up like a deadbolt.

Peter has that panic when he wakes up sometimes, has it once for almost an hour until he finally wears himself out and collapses, soaked through with sweat. He’s pulled back under having never moved a muscle.

*

He feels feverish, his mind writhing as the fire climbs, the flames burning over the line of mountain ash without moving it. If he could ever pinpoint the beginning of madness it's in the moment he flings himself at the sagging, inflamed entryway - not with the intent to rescue, but with the need to die with his family. The utter disregard for his own body, becoming a thing of brutal selfish fear. He can hear them, screaming for help, howling and sobbing down in the basement most of them. There had been a voice above in the upper levels but now it’s silent over the roar and hiss of the fire.

The porch has collapsed utterly, the front door caved in like a mouth belching black smoke, gruesome and sunken in on itself. If there had just been _time_ , had been any warning at all, Rylie or Natalie, twins from his great-aunt’s side of the family and both apprenticed under a coven in Los Angeles, could’ve broken the circle. Even little James might’ve had a chance, all of seven with barely enough control over his magic to puff out a candle. The oldest witch in the pack, his Aunt Molly, is nowhere to be seen – he doesn’t remember her bond breaking but he can’t find her there in his mind.

Peter batters at the barrier until his clothes catch fire, his claws bending against the wall of magic, his body shoving at it until he feels an arm snap under the pressure he’s putting it through. Nothing registers until the fire licks up the right side of his face, slurping at his skin and tickling around his ear, shouting down into his brain _painpainpainPAIN_. Dropping to the earth he rubs his face against it and digs with spasming fingers, bits of grass catching alight as his face presses close to smear his cheek and scalp in the dirt. Oh the ground tears at his flesh, pulls at his face and shoulder while he rolls until the rest of the agony starts to sink in and he shrieks, lurching painfully over the dry soil as his knees pushing him up only to drop him.

Fingers of flame have started touching his hip, stroking his skin like a lover, and his pants smoke as the fire curls around his leg underneath. With a panicked heave Peter tears them off, clawing his shoe apart when it bubbles around his foot from the heat. He can smell them, his pack, the waft of cooking meat like something from a child’s night terror; unnameable, uncontrollable, a madness in the darkness waiting to take him.

Finally above it all are the sounds of sirens, the wail of them following the pillar of smoke to spread out into the afternoon sky. There are already so many cars in the driveway – because they were supposed to be _safe_ here, this was the gathering month – that the fire trucks have to pull into the yard to get closer. Peter claws feebly at the dirt – he can see the ash on the ground, the line of it thinner than his pinkie finger and as unmovable as a mountain. At least by him – he sobs, the burns on his face pulling as he slaps dirt at the ash. It does nothing; nothing can move it, can break the line, without _intent_ and at least a trace of magic. Where is their emissary?

A deputy is crouched by him suddenly, or maybe he’s been there trying to talk Peter isn’t sure and doesn’t _care_ , talking about an ambulance and how his wife is on her way to break the line, to bring down the barrier. He’s talking quietly, tears running down his face, his voice something for Peter to focus on instead of the scent of cooking, burning meat that’s glued itself at the back of his throat.

Peter cracks his mouth open and croaks, “We – didn’t _do_ anything, no reason for this.”

The man’s face is savaged by compassion and Peter gets the feeling he would hug him if he could without aggravating the burns, “There could _never_ be a reason for something like this.”

That makes Peter want to laugh, because he can still smell the fucking hunters, can taste them on the wind, the scent of aconite-laced accelerant and the sound of laughter. Suddenly he’s afraid the deputy meant something else and claws upward against the drag of his right side.

In that moment he grabs the deputy by the arm, bringing himself up and forcing the words out, “Not an accident, don’t you _dare_ – “ he chokes, sobbing, and collapses back to the ground. There’s no way, _no way_ his pack wouldn’t have escaped, they could’ve been out before it really even caught, could’ve been _safe_ , if this had been an accident.

The deputy is stricken and he shakes his head, starting to speak, but Peter’s head is floating away, his eyesight is failing and the man starts to shout at him, or maybe at someone else. He can feel someone touching him but his body is shaking and he just wants to die, he just wants to crawl into the house and die with his family. He can’t, can’t get in, can’t hear them anymore.

But he can taste them, can feel the scent of them coating his tongue. That’s the last thing he remembers for a long time.

*

_February 2013_

There’s a point, a point at which the moments when he’s lucid start to feel less dreamlike, more like he’s waking up from a long sleep. It surprises him the first time he manages to speak. He doesn’t remember what he said later, can’t parse the sounds, but at the time it shocks him and exhausts him back into sleep before he can understand the expression on Derek’s face.

The next few times are no better, just short uncomfortable minutes where he can’t really move but feels more awake than he’s been in a long time. It’s easier to look directly at things, easier to register words and scents than it was before. He can’t speak, can see the images of the words but can’t hear the sounds he’s supposed to make for them. He has so few words bouncing around in his head. Mostly they’re names. Derek, Laura, Talia. Talia’s wife, Elaine. Cora. That’s almost his whole vocabulary. Other things, scents, flashes of images, it jumbles up his mind and clutters the pieces he’s trying to put together. He has a few other words but they’re nothing he wants to dwell on.  

It’s infuriating. But it’s not like his frustration means anything to anybody except Derek and the doctor he finally gets introduced to, Dr. Carter.

He still has no clock in his room, no calendar. He knows he’s in New York, in Derek’s apartment. What month is it? What season? It feels like fall but that might just be the – the cold air inside. What _year_ is it? How old is Derek now? He looks older, looks harder and smarter and more pained than the skinny kid Peter recalls. If feels so strange to look at him now, like he’s intruding on something private.

If Peter had been with Derek as he matured he might have missed the changes to his nephew but as a nearly side-by-side comparison of the vivid image of a sixteen-year-old Derek in his mind to this hurt, weary man is a particular kind of fist to the gut that Peter never could have prepared for. It strikes in different ways that he doesn’t even register all at once, some blatant but others so subtle it takes Peter several interactions to notice. The way his confident, happy nephew has morphed into a man curled in on himself like a dead flower makes Peter’s insides cold and clammy. He can sense the wounded animal with patched fur in the furtive looks Derek gives him – like he’s not sure that Peter’s real.

As for Peter himself he can’t really explain how he’s feeling. There’s a lot of ambiguous nausea stretching through his guts, the uncomfortable heaving feeling of his gag reflex being constantly triggered and ruthlessly supressed by the feeding tube shoved down his throat, and something that would probably be a permanent headache if it was happening to a human. So he lays there and tries to _focus_ , tries to work with what he has and listen to Derek when he talks, swimming through the static in his head to pick out words he can recognise.

Dr. Carter’s in the room some days, always with Derek there as they talk about him. Or he assumes it’s about him – there’s a lot of his name being thrown around if they aren’t. Very little of what they say holds meaning to him – his head is full of holes, the coma eating through his soft memories like termites through wood. Wafer thin barriers separate him from the heat in his thoughts, the memory of dirt under his fingernails and raw, blistering skin tearing against the ground. It feels like hardly any time has passed since he was there looking up at the wall of beaten gold.

Sometimes when he closes his eyes it’s still there in front of him, just beyond his reach, the shimmering sheet of fire sucking back from his straining fingers like shy child. Sparks gust around him, tantalisingly near but twirling playfully away from his skin and clothes when he grabs for them, the sound of his family screaming so loud it nearly drowns out the creak of burning wood and screeching metal.

The clot of ash at the back of his throat spills slowly – _sososlowly_ – like gritty wet cement over his tongue, seeping between his teeth until he’s gasping awake and choking on his feeding tube. His body is too weak to move more than the painful heaving of his chest, unable to wipe away the tear streaks running down his temples and the bile-spit trailing from his always open lips. It’s embarrassing what a mess he is, how he can’t lift even a finger to clean himself up, the frustration of it eating away at him.

Once or twice Derek’s around for the dramatic wake up but he doesn’t try to make everything seem like it’s okay, doesn’t even try to speak into the gaping silence left behind. Peter doesn’t like that his nephew has had to understand what he’s feeling right now but he’s grateful all the same that all the man does is crawl up into the bed to sit by his head and dry his face with gentle motions. Warm fingers sift through his hair to calm and scent him and he’s unable to fully name what he’s feeling, this tearing, _wrenching_ deafness in his mind where his thoughts used to run a mile a minute, working things out three, four, five steps ahead of everyone else.

If he could remember the word he’s sure he would call it unbearable, maybe even devastating, He’s sure that he would scream that it’s killing him, that he’s losing his mind – that what’s even the _fucking point_ if he’s not going to be _Peter_ anymore? He’s glad he can’t speak in those moments, can’t tell Derek how much he sometimes wished he’d just died with the rest of their family. It wouldn’t be fair to either of them for all his vitriol to pour out like so much oily sludge into the quiet, healing life Derek has been nurturing for them both. He probably doesn’t have to say any of it anyway. He’s somehow sure that Derek’s felt the same way more than once in however long it’s been. It’s not a thought that’s particularly comforting.

*

_March 2013 - April 2013_

The struggle with his vocabulary isn’t all the same though; sometimes the letters of a word hang there in his mind but the meaning is missing, the way to push the shapes together in his mouth is cut from his wits. Other times a word will shake loose and he’ll grab it without knowing what it means, he’ll hold onto it and waste what feels like hours trying to puzzle out what the significance is. Like his brain is constantly jumping – his mind is a scratched CD, cutting itself off and skipping from track to track. He’ll have it for just a second, but then – _focus_ , God, _please_. Just. _Focus._

There _are_ things he loses that are better left eaten by the fire in his head, though. For instance, Peter can honestly say that he’s glad he doesn’t remember everything that happens while he’s recovering. He’s sad that Derek has to remember more than he does, ashamed that he’s so relieved he doesn’t have to keep those times with him for the rest of his life.

He is though. He’s pitifully glad that he doesn’t have to recall the nights he pukes around the feeding tube, jerking and shaking from his nightmares or the way he can barely breathe when he starts sobbing. He blissfully forgets the seizure he has while Derek’s at work that pops the catheter bag and spills the bedpan. It’s an unspeakable solace that he doesn’t remember lying in his own piss and shit soaked sheets for seven hours until Derek gets home and finds him curled on his side with his claws out, the mattress torn up and his IV ripped out. There had been a lot of crying involved and it wasn’t a good day for either of them, but the only part Peter remembers is the warm rag washing his face and neck clean.

The only way he knows about all the bad times he can’t recall is because Derek confides to him years later how glad he is that Peter doesn’t have those memories, that he’ll never be haunted by them or forced to relive them. When Peter apologises for forgetting, his nephew hugs him and whispers that it’s nothing he wouldn’t do, over and over again, for the life they’ve built.

*

_May 2013_

It's taken a hard few months but finally he clears his throat when Derek pauses his reading and whispers the apology he’s been sitting on since he looked down at the dead girl who wouldn't heal and ran away from her. The look on Derek’s face is enough to make him want to say it again, to say it until the words become magical and fix the way he’s just destroyed the moment of accomplishment. He doesn’t say anything though, because he can’t speak in the face of Derek’s crumpled expression, the way his eyes are just _wrecked_.

That’s when Peter knows that something’s wrong. But Derek only takes a deep, shuddering breath and leans over to hug him. Peter can feel him shaking, can feel the wet spots against his shirt when Derek murmurs how he’s proud of him, but Peter doesn’t say anything in response. He’s not sure his words would come out right and it’s not like he knows what they would be anyway.

What can he say in the face of that grief, when he’s not even sure it _is_ grief? What if it’s anger and his mind just isn’t getting it right?

He does realise that Derek’s not told him everything, has barely told him _anything_ , really, but he can’t fault him for it. Or maybe he did tell him, he wonders for not the first time. Maybe Peter’s just forgotten, maybe he’s losing time still. How would he know? It’s a sense of grinding resignation that’s wearing down on his remaining sanity, chipping away the foundations he’s trying to rebuild on.

It feels like the rug he’s standing on keeps developing soft spots and lumps in its folds, tripping him up and fluttering to tug at his feet. He’s still standing but only because he’s stubborn, braced on all-fours in his desperation.

He’s gone his whole life knowing he’s not a human, has never been anything but proud of being a werewolf, but it’s not until he starts questioning his own thoughts and memories that he begins to feel like an _animal_. There in the gaps between remembered time he’s nothing more than a simple-minded beast. It’s something that stays with him even after his time starts to even out, starts to lay itself flat like mortared bricks at his feet, solid and unmoveable. No, he never loses _that_ memory – the feeling of mindless wandering from day to day is a thing that haunts his nightmares for years.

*

_June 2013_

Seven years. Well, _almost_ seven years. Like an _almost_ matters at all. It doesn’t do anything to bridge the chasm that’s just ripped open in Peter’s mind at the knowledge.

He’s not even sure he answers Derek when his nephew tells him how long he was asleep, can’t be sure he doesn’t go quiet and lose his voice. He remembers looking at the threads in his quilt, running his shaking fingers over the stitches until he looked up and found Derek watching the sky outside the window with a lost look to his face.

For a moment Peter wants to snarl at him, wants to bite and snap at how at least Derek’s been _awake_ , at least Derek can _walk_ and _eat_ and _talk_. His breath is still caught in his mouth though, mixing his letters around until he can’t be sure the words he has are right or real. It gives him the time he needs to break the swell of hurt, furious rage and at last take his nephew’s hand. He doesn’t speak, he can’t. Not yet. But he holds on, and lets Derek hold onto him, and they sit there until the little square of sky has gone dark and grieve together over the years they’ve lost.

*

June is the month he sits up on his own, it’s the month of his first full sentence without losing any words, it’s the month he gets to try eating tiny bites of yoghurt. He chokes the first dozen times, his throat rejecting the sensation and closing up in panic but eventually he out-stubborns his body and manages to swallow a few drops.

It’s not a quick-transition by any means, and he loses so much weight once the feeding tube is out that Dr. Carter brings in nutrition potions suited for a metabolism-heavy supernatural like an Alpha were. She explains that they aren’t a permanent solution and can cause constipation and severe gut pain if taken too often, but they’re the only feasible option without putting the tube back in. On the positive side, the work of swallowing them helps him practice for getting other foods down and they sustain him while he struggles with blended eggs and concentrated protein drinks. It gets better.

Progress is painstaking and he clings on by the tips of his claws some days but he and Derek lean on each other through the hardest days and on the good ones they have each other to share in the ‘little’ victories. Nothing in those days is a _little_ victory, not when every battle is fought till all parties are at their wits’ end and ready to scream, but they’re something to look back on later and marvel at.

They’re memories he doesn’t mind.

*

_July 2013_

Peter’s not sure that Derek ever forgives himself when he finds out about Peter losing time. There’s a defeated kind of sadness to him when Peter finally explains his fears of forgetting things, of blank gaps in his memory.

Which is not to say that he’s defeated _by_ it.

The clock, Derek explained as he installs it on the table by the bed, reads the time from a satellite and can’t be wrong unless the time zone setting gets changed. It also reads the day, month and year, like a tiny calendar. It’s letters and numbers glow a little so he can see them better at night.

Peter fights against the drag of his distress when he fully realises that almost seven years have passed since he last saw his sister and mother, last heard the voices of their family, last _walked_. It’s not something he likes thinking about, not something he gets to focus on if he wants a productive day. When he starts to think about the time he’s lost his words tend to abandon him to swish around in his chest, mixing up his thoughts until he just –

So he works to push past the thoughts, watches instead how his nephew’s hands set up the clock so it faces him from the nightstand, adjusts it so even if Peter’s lying flat he’ll be able to see the display. The count of the milliseconds is strangely comforting, like waves on a beach that crash and roll over to start again, the background of the night sky soothing so his minds quiets to a dull roar. A precision clock, a _smart_ clock, whatever that means, a clock that’s specific and correct down to the nanosecond because somewhere up orbiting the earth a satellite is reading the time to it.

The phone is something else, set up on its stand by the clock and plugged in to a charger so it never dies. The app on it reads him, listens to his breathing patterns, shows him how long he’s been sleeping and how his sleep was. Did he toss and turn or did he sleep deeply. They’re things he wonders but now he can see, can even listen to recordings of things he might’ve said. He’s never been one to talk in his sleep that he knows of but it’s reassuring all the same and he makes sure to pay attention when Derek explains how it works.

By the end of it he feels raw and more than a little vulnerable but the Delta scent soaked into the den helps so much he could cry. There are still things he doesn’t know; he’s getting better at telling when Derek avoids things, changes the subject, backtracks from what he was going to say. It’s fine. He’s not ready for whatever it is, is sometimes barely ready to open his mouth and speak simple sentences. He can’t imagine it’s urgent, understands there are things he’s not prepared to be told. It’s not like he doesn’t have a few puzzle pieces for himself, but he’s not in a rush to relive things while he’s trying to make his hands quit shaking long enough to eat a spoonful of applesauce.

It’s not like he’s going anywhere anytime soon, and he can finally admit to himself that there’s nowhere he’d rather be, that he’s glad – most days if not all – that he lived. That he’s glad he didn’t die with the rest of them, that he’s relieved he’s still here for Derek, still gets to see his nephew every day and talk to him, halted though his words are. Derek’s never seemed to even notice when he makes mistakes, appears every time to simply enjoy hearing Peter talking. And maybe he is – Peter’s own happiness with the process is largely tempered by the slow progress and the times when he can’t say more than one or two straight words.

Suddenly he remembers a saying he heard a while back – _seven years and some change_ – and he laughs until his face hurts. Derek stops on his way past the open door to listen, a bemused but fond look to his eyebrows as he leans against the doorframe until Peter’s tired and his laughing is tapering off.

“What’s got you in such a good mood?”

Peter just looks up at him with a sad absolution and breathes, “We’re all works in progress.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [The scene, again from Watership Down because it just fit here, dammit, that really portrays Kate's whole bearing/attitude throughout her talk with Peter.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8q8tHxwrGw) 
> 
> Also I imagine that the way Kate squeezes his throat with the tube inside would be somewhat like waterboarding, though I can't say so based on personal experience. She would have turned down the heart-rate machine for sure, adjusting it so the nurses wouldn't be alerted to his pulse flying up. Just another thing to highlight how awful she is, you know...for funsies.
> 
> I'm fully aware that normally a feeding tube would go in through the stomach after so long with such a long-term patient as Peter. I'm going to say that they couldn't do it because of the burns at first and then Peter fell through the cracks at the hospital. There's a little hand-waving here though I'm trying to keep most of it as medically okay as I can, given the givens. Forgive me here, I didn't realise it until after the Kate scene was written and I liked what I'd done too much to delete it.
> 
> Really hope you like this! I'm ending this one here though I have more planned. There will be more in the series later on but I figure I might as well put this out since I'm finished with it and it has the ability to stand on it's own. Tell me what you thought! 
> 
> “It's the days you have every right to breakdown and fall apart, yet choose to show up anyway that matter most. Don't diminish the small steps that others can't see.”  
> ― Brittany Burgunder
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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